1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for controlling a length of information frames assembled to perform error recovery control in data transmission that is realized using an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The ATM network provides various types of services having various traffic characteristics in various transmission speeds from high speed to low speed, by segmentating transmission data into cells having a fixed 53 bytes length and by statistically multiplexing the cells. When a congestion of cells occurs because of an increase in traffic in the ATM network, cells can be lost, because the ATM layer does not provide an error recovery procedure. Therefore, to securely transmit burst digital data, an error recovery control should be provided in a data link layer higher than the ATM layer.
Conventional data link protocols such as an LAPB (link access protocol balanced) may be used to perform the error recovery control, wherein the transmission data are segmentated into frames including error detection codes and the frames are retransmitted if frames are not received in a receiver side or if errors are detected in received frames.
If the frames are short, a process for error detection is frequently carried out, and therefore, transmission efficiency is lowered, but, if the frames are long, the error detection process is not frequently carried out. However, as the traffic in the ATM network increases, the congestion of cells frequently occurs. Then, if the frames are long, the rate of received frames including errors increases, so that retransmission frequently occurs, and consequently, transmission efficiency is lowered.